The Best Design Tips for a Great Website User Experience

Great graphics are essential for your website to draw in prospective consumers. It shows that you made an effort to make the site appear ideal for your customers. While beautiful graphics are outstanding, they are not the only factor for an excellent website. A very good website should have readable text, harmonious color combinations, and easy navigation. The combination of these items together makes for a great user experience. Remember – the tiniest details in design matter…

Let’s take a closer look at these web design factors that can help you craft a great user experience.

Easy-to-Read Text

It’s important to make your site easy on the eyes for your consumers and readership. A good way to find out whether your site is readable is to place yourself in the shoes of your customers and actually read your web pages from their perspective. Keep it simple and pay close attention to the overall readability of your content.

The Yoast SEO plugin has an onboard “Readability Checker” that acts us your copilot when writing content. It’s by far the best plugin to help keep you on track…and it’s totally free. However, I would highly suggest getting the getting the Yoast SEO Premium version. The redirect manager alone is worth the extra cost.

Good Font Combinations

Look at the fonts that you’re using on the site. If they are too intricate, it might be best to simplify and use fonts that are visually appealing, but not distracting or overwhelming. Keep in mind that simplicity is best when it comes to fonts especially when reading longer and more expansive content like on blog posts. Check out Google Fonts for free font sets and experiment with different heading & body combinations. We tend to like “Lato” or “Raleway” for title fonts and “Open Sans” for our body font. However, the trends are always changing so be sure to do some experimenting on your own…and don’t forget to check the fonts on mobile.

Wise Color Choices

Colors will have a significant impact on your prospective consumers and ultimately how they receive your brand. They will also set the mood and tone of your web page. Additionally, strategically chosen colors can enhance brand recognition and increase your website’s power to persuade.

On top of selecting colors that represent your company, consider using seasonal color trends. Applying Pantone’s Color of the Year and choosing gradient patterns can help produce outstanding visuals, which stay in the mind of your customers. As with your font combinations, I would also suggest researching color trends to see what inspires you. Here are some website color trends over at Canva.

Gradients have come back and are better than ever. So, don’t be afraid to add a little flair to your site. Our site uses a hot orange gradient extensively.

Simple Navigation

Site navigation is an important deciding factor for your potential consumers. Your navigation can either persuade your customer to engage your website or drive them away. A good way to improve your website’s navigation is to ensure consistency throughout the site. Consistent navigation increases your visitors’ ability to look for relevant information more quickly and promotes ease of use.

A/B Web Design Testing

In 2009, Doug Bowman, who was then Google’s top designer, wrote in his blog, “I’ve grown tired of debating such minuscule design decisions.” He was referring to Google’s practice of using A/B testing to determine which design choices would generate great web design results or responses from audiences. Google applied this testing strategy to even the smallest details, such as border width and text colors.

It’s remarkable how Google goes to such lengths to determine if a 1-pixel change in frame size makes a difference. It may seem inconsequential, but Google thinks otherwise. If anything, their experience with design tells us how important it is to think about the details.

Details Influence Conversion… and Sales

The most notable example of how the smallest details matter in web design is Google’s experiment with hyperlink colors. Their standard color for clickable links is blue, but did you know they initially tested 41 different shades of blue before deciding on the current one? By testing and recording click-through-rates for each shade, they determined that a purple-ish shade invites more clicks than a greenish shade of blue.

For a seemingly minute change, the effort paid off superbly. According to Google, the insights they got from this experiment earned them an extra $200 million for that year alone.

Details Affect User Experience

Attention to detail is what drives the development of user experience. Google’s success in the example above is the result of them taking the time and using their resources to find out which creative choices will give users the best experience.

A single change in the design, like the font style, text color, background image, or border length can have polarizing effects. It can either throw off audiences or earn their approval. Of course, web designers have to aim for the latter.

Final Thoughts

If you ever need the help of an agency offering web design to create a functional and beautiful website for your business, count on COFORGE Marketing. We ensure that the websites we design work across all platforms and devices, so you can reach your potential consumers regardless of how they access information.